Support for DADT Repeal; the Question of Kinect Sex; A New Kind of Gender?; No Public Domain for Playboy

Poll shows most Americans in favor of allowing LGBT to serve in military.

A new Pew Research Center poll has discovered that 58 percent of Americans favor gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, with only 27 percent opposing, leading some to think that “fighting the gay agenda” is not actually a winning political tactic.

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans supporting LGBT military service members hasn’t changed much since 1994 (so why has this been an issue for so long?) A wide swath of political and religious ideologies were sampled in the poll, from Democrats to Republicans to Protestants, Catholic and unaffiliated. Tea Party supporters are (surprise!) less inclined to allow gays to serve openly, but they’re still at 44 percent in favor of DADT repeal. So the times haven’t exactly changed, it’s just taken this long for those in office to catch up with public opinion?

As the Kinect was designed to track the movements of the users’ body, it seems to have fabulous potential for adult applications—but the Xbox would have to look a little closer at the user’s nether regions. “Genitalia,” Machulis wrote, “for the most part, are not a major geometric feature of the human body when taken in perspective of physical size....Neither are they normally used in the control of video games, be they rated [for all] or [for adults only].”

But, despite the fact that Machulis isn’t coming up with any satisfying hacks yet, he puts it out to the techie populous to out-braniac him and “prove me a sexual Luddite once again. At least I hope they will.”

Company president Dina D. Paige, a transsexual woman, says, “The term ‘sex’ to describe gender is no longer adequate for fully describing the diversity of the sexuality variant possibilities that exist today. A system is needed that would address the inadequacy of the current binary system and the term ‘sex’ to describe gender.” Which is all fine and well—but if we’re into re-establishing gender definitions, why did they go with the traditional blue and pink? Why not puce and paisley? Or, better yet, leather and lace?

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Come January 1, 2011: Sigmund Freud’s gonna be in it, but Playboy Issue #1 is not—and we’re talking about the public domain, of course.

On the upcoming New Year’s Day, a bunch of copyrights are expiring after their copyright shelf life—and the first issue of Playboy would have been in public domain were it not for extensions made to public domain laws after 1978. Marilyn Monroe for public use? Sigh. So close, and yet so far.